A secret agent in a white car chases two motorcyclists in a crowded bazaar and shoots them dead. A Land Cruiser, in a bid to scoop up the agent, speeds on the wrong side of the road and accidentally runs over another motorcyclist. The rescue attempt fails, and […]

The following is part of a document submitted to Iqbal Academy Pakistan in March 2008 for publication as a small book, Iqbal in the Mind of Europe – an overview of the Western interpretations of Iqbal. It was supposed to undergo some further improvement but […]

According to one contemporary account, Anarkali was in her forties or older when she was suspected of having an affair with the heir apparent, Prince Salim, who was in the thirtieth year of his life and father to at least three sons from numerous wives. Salim’s father, the otherwise enlightened Emperor […]

Sharing a husband with seventeen other wives and several hundreds of slave girls is far from the romantic picture of an all-encompassing love that frames the portrait of Nurjahan in popular stories. However, the fact remains that she was indeed loved by her royal husband in ways unusual for […]

‘What’s your sun sign?’ The answer to this question could decide one’s appointment to the civil services in the days of Humayun, if one is to believe the story that he organized his entire administration on astrological elements. According to this account, for instance, the officers belonging to water signs […]